Christmas Party

Firm Christmas parties always raise conflicting emotions in me. On the one hand free food, drink and the enjoyable sight of ones colleagues making complete dicks of themselves. On the other hand tight self discipline is required to avoid being the one making the complete dick. We had our firm party at Wildfire, a restaurant near Circular Quay (so near that drowning was a danger late in the night). Several hundred odd members of one of Australia's premier law firms turned up for the evening.

I got ready (preparation time three minutes) in a hotel room rented by some female colleagues (preparation time over an hour each). We were only about ten minutes walk from the venue so time was not an issue. A Latin American theme was the order of the day which in practice meant a bunch of sombreros and false moustaches plus the occasional bullfighter. We all dressed up, I use the word "we" in the loosest possible sense, the girls dressed up but I settled for painting my nails and wearing a red fuzzy bulls head so that I could be a bull for Natalie's disturbingly attractive matador.

We had a mixture of styles; Liza - pretty, Natalie - striking, Cathy - elegant, Michelle - sexy and Neil - bull. Thus attired we strolled through the Rocks to the restaurant. Once there we mingled with our colleagues and agreed that we were definitely the best dressed group present. Access to food seemed to be determined by how close one happened to be standing to the preparation area but alcohol quite literally followed us around. On the other hand it took half an hour and three attempts to get a glass of orange juice and even then I had to almost wrestle it out of the hands of the waitress who didn't seem particularly inclined to give it to me.

Still there was music, dancing and upstairs there were comfy couches and a coffee machine plus barista. That last was a brilliant idea. Another brilliant idea was had by whoever organised the speeches and formal part of the evening. It was over in five minutes. Kudos to whoever organised that.

The Hot Polish Girl turned up late (did I mention she was a colleague?) and proceeded to tear up the dance floor. She very kindly danced with me and even more kindly failed to point out that I suck at dancing. All in all a very enjoyable evening, I left at about a quarter to eleven when everything was fun but nothing was too messy. I'll find out what else happened from facebook.